Summary: This presentation will feature a select group of easy-to-use, (mostly) free online tools to plan and create online tutorials (aka, screencasts). Key features of these online tutorial creation tools will be demonstrated and best practices for screencasting, including voice-over narration and
storyboarding, will be discussed.

Attention librarians in the United States who wish to initiate and/or extend bioinformatics services at your institution! The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the NLM Training Center (NTC) will be offering “A Librarian’s Guide to NCBI” course in 2015. Participants who complete the class will be eligible for Medical Library Association (MLA) Continuing Education credits. The course is free, but travel costs are at the expense of the participant. However, you typically have to submit an application to attend, due to limited enrollment.

There are two parts to the course, and applicants must take both parts:

Part 1: “Fundamentals in Bioinformatics and Searching” is a six-week, online (asynchronous) pre-course.

Part 2: A five-day in-person course offered on-site at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

Important Dates:

Monday, September 29, 2014 – Watch for a detailed announcement about the course and application process here in the NLM Technical Bulletin.

Community Health Maps Blog (communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov) is an initiative designed to share information about free and low cost and easy-to-use applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping tools. The goal is to help community-based and other types of small organizations collect and visualize information about their communities with an eye towards using these techniques to support planning and decision-making about community health. The tools discussed on the Community Health Maps Blog can support the collection and visualization of health statistics, demographic information, community resources, and events thereby facilitating a better understanding of community conditions.

Why Blog?

The interactive nature of blogging helps Community Health Maps share information about hardware platforms and software applications available to communities as they consider how, or if, they might use GIS.

NLM encourages the submission of blog postings by those who use such resources to carry out projects within their communities as well as those who have identified additional applications that may be of interest for this purpose.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project is pleased to announced the creation of a new tool that helps you gather data about library habits and attitudes of your own community. Librarians, educators, and other groups can now create their own unique “community version” of the Pew’s library user quiz and can invite members of their community to participate with a unique URL. Learn more about the quiz and community tool on the Pew’s blog.

Global health authority, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the launch of a new open access policy in January 2014 to ensure the widespread dissemination of scientific research. The policy, which applies to all WHO-authored or WHO-funded research published in external journals and books, kicked into action on July 1, 2014.
There are many drivers behind the open access movement: to accelerate the pace of scientific research, discovery and innovation; increase the visibility, readership and impact of authors’ works, as well as to enhance interdisciplinary research, to name but a few. All factors point to one ultimate goal, the advancement of knowledge, which both researchers and publishers know, can only be reached by sharing results and making them as accessible as possible.

Effective January 1, articles authored or co-authored by WHO staff or WHO funding recipients will have to be published in an open-access journal or a hybrid open-access journal (a subscription journal with some open access articles). The research must be published under the terms of the standard Creative Commons licence or in a subscription journal that allows for the depositing of the article in Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) within 12 months of the official publication date.

WHO will become the 26th funding member of the open access repository Europe PMC; the most widely used biomedical bibliographic database service. It provides free access to nearly 3 million full-text biomedical research articles, over 23 million abstracts from PubMed and 4 million biological and patent records. It is the same barrier-free and peer reviewed repository that BioMed Central publishes with, to ensure all its articles are immediately made freely available.

WHO will be joining 25 other life sciences and biomedical research funders at a time when providing free access to research outputs continues to be championed at the highest levels.

On September 25, 2013, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Final Guidance on Mobile Medical Applications. As applications on mobile devices are increasingly used in health care, the FDA has now provided a framework for determining if a mobile device running a health app is a medical device. To illustrate the significance of this guidance and what it means for the future use of mobile applications in patient care and education, the AAMC is hosting a webinar with Sharon R. Klein, JD, partner at Pepper Hamilton, LLP to explore how it plays into the larger picture of data privacy, patient care, and government regulations. For more information, please contact gir@aamc.org.

Follow the link to read the summary of the 2014 ALA Annual Evidence Based Practices Discussion Group summary of presentations and discussion. Thank you to everyone who came to the discussion. It was very interesting: http://connect.ala.org/node/226376

Open source, open science, open data, open access, open education, open learning — This fall Stanford librarians and faculty are working with international partners to offer the innovative free (no-cost) course Open Knowledge: Changing the Global Course of Learning on the OpenEdX platform (https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Education/OpenKnowledge/Fall2014/about)).

The course provides an introduction to the important concept of openness from a variety of perspectives, including library and information studies, education, publishing, economics, politics, and more. Open Knowledge is international and multi-institutional, bringing together instructors and students from Stanford University (USA), Fordham University (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Simon Frasier University (Canada), the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (Mexico), and the rest of the world.

Learn more about the concept of “open”, develop your digital literacy skills, and connect with peers from around the world.